


Knows Not Its Own Depth

by lynndyre



Category: Tales of the Abyss
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Character Death Fix, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-27
Updated: 2011-10-27
Packaged: 2017-10-25 00:35:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lynndyre/pseuds/lynndyre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Malkuth's Chesedonia Regional Forces were attacked, General Frings returned to Grand Chokmah among the wounded. And survived.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Knows Not Its Own Depth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [CupidStrikes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CupidStrikes/gifts).



> This story includes background detail from the game, but uses the anime timeline (circa ep 19) for one particular scene and the placement of characters.  
> To my recipient- an extra fic because I loved the idea of this prompt ♥ It made me look at Frings and his relationships in more depth than I had before, and he's wonderful.

Within Grand Chokmah's palace there was finally quiet. His footsteps were audible, uneven, and the voices were those of maids, guards, councilmen, not the unceasing pain and noise of wounded men echoing in the lower decks of the landship transport. Aslan pushed open the sanctuary door and let it swing to behind him, and even the faint sounds of the palace vanished. The room was empty, the single chair the same one the old priest had sat in, reading Aslan's birth Score for the year. No one's Score had predicted reality.

Aslan moved to pull it back from the altar, only to sink into it instead when the world greyed around him. It hurt to sit. His chest felt heavy, his breath as though through thick wool.

He rubbed his eyes, gloves rough against the abraded parts of his face. He needed to report to the emperor. Needed to tell Peony that it wasn't Kimlasca, whatever banners had been flown. But the sanctuary was so calm, the first calm since sand exploded into fire all around them.

Pain spiked in his chest, and he pressed his palm to it, pressure more a distraction than a relief. The silence of the sanctuary drew closer, tight and comforting... and broke at the weighted clang of the door, and then Colonel Curtiss was kneeling beside him, tangible and immediate.

General Frings gave his report.

***

When he woke, his eyes found the cool blue-white of his rooms in the Military Headquarters. His first thought was that it should have been the golden scrollwork, Yulia's tuning fork from the walls of the sanctuary. His second was to wonder at Jade having moved him, and it made him smile. The third was the recognition of pain, and the realisation that he hadn't expected to wake up at all.

For a long moment it was all he could do to stare at the window, seeing nothing but the glass. In the end, though he didn't intend it, he slept again.

The next waking was swifter, faculties returning in an upward swell, instead of an incomplete patchwork. This time his confusion came not from his location, but from the pressure that had woken him, the slow, constant petting of a hand across his brow and hairline.

"You in there, Aslan? Still with me?"

Aslan turned his head into the palm of the hand, pushed his eyes open, and blinked, slowly, until they cleared.

"There you are. Good man. Stay that way."

His emperor's thumb stroked Aslan's temple, and fingers curled deeper into his hair.

"..not... a rappig. ..'r majesty."

Peony smiled, the smile that had welcomed Frings to the military council. The smile that had made him strive even harder, become the youngest serving General in the Malkuth Imperial Forces. "Still mine."

Peony's eyes turned serious. "Jade delivered your report, the attack on the Chesedonia Regional Forces was not an act of war by Kimlasca. The council has been informed too, though half of them would love to have an excuse anyway."

Aslan breathed through the spike of pain at remembering, and forced his teeth to unclench. "Standards ... were Kimlascan, ...not equipment." His hand found the edge of Peony's sleeve. "Most ... no uniforms." He panted, remembering dead eyes in blank faces, and the crushing pressure wave as flames exploded forth. His breath caught in his throat, and Peony hauled him upright while he coughed on the air until blood rose fresh in his mouth.

"Shhhh. Aslan. Shh. Enough. Your report is heard." Aslan blinked and tried to inhale slowly, counted the beats of the heart beneath his ear. Peony's chest was warm, solid, and smelled faintly of rappig and stress. Peony's hand cupped the back of Aslan's neck, and a moment later he felt imperial lips on his brow. He tightened his fingers in the fabric of Peony's sarong.

"...buuuu."

Peony laughed into his hair. "That's my general. Good boy."

***

"It will be some time before you are permitted to be ambulatory, and there are several staircases between here and the sanctuary." Jade's glove was textured, familiar against his palm, and the small gold tuning fork solid and heavy. Jade wrapped the chain once around Aslan's wrist.

"This world without the Score. It's frightening." Aslan tightened his hand around the cool metal. Yulia who had read forth the life of the world was never so prideful as to condemn those who sought to prolong it. "But so free."

Jade looked away, eyes fixed on something in the distance of his mind. "Yes. I think it will be."

Aslan's smile won out against his exhaustion, and stayed at the corners of his lips as Jade pulled the curtain over the widest shaft of sunlight and slipped silently from the room.

***

Eldrant-Hod fell. Luke the rappig whimpered, with little grunting squeaks, and curled up between three of his brethren.

Gailardia Galan Count Gardios returned to Malkuth. So did Colonel Curtiss.

Aslan stood in the great hall, uniform collar comfortingly tight about his throat once more, and watched the emperor greet his 'uncute Jade' with something closer to a full-body tackle than an embrace.

Aslan held out his hand, and Jade caught his wrist, let himself be pulled up from the floor. Jade's grip tightened, tested, reassured itself, then fell away, familiar red eyes even once more.

And both of them reached out again, one for each of Peony's hands.


End file.
